Proximities

On the other side of the rain mirror
in the lush comfort of blurry seasons
sun-drop and rain-drop
in wild carnalilty 
print an immemorial tease.

On this side of deceit
there's a floodplain 
where word-debris eyesore
forces blink or look-away.

For she's diminished 
in a conspiracy of circumstances 
where a harsh-word summoned
a dimensional-swirl and necessary silence.

She's close.
Though.

Closer than rain-drench
right here in dismissal and neglect
in the lost pages of unwritten books
that resist translation 
closer now in the eloping of ink
where ignorant rush
hangs broken heart-bits of blue and green
from the edge of night-trysts that came undone.

Close.
Same size
same butterflies 
in same back-forth flutter
of crazy words 
where love-scripts are re-written
in the lucidity of silence
rising as black-white monologue
and tracing the inevitable:
the floral pattern
of post-kiss time-freeze. 

Softness

Love in requitedness 
unfolds into butterflies and petals
and in its going and gone
collapses into voids so blessed 
that screams are exquisitely private
all kiss-me-nots and exquisite brambles
conscious venture into known traps
nights of lunacy
and deaths that never arrive,
softness that brims in eyes
and the edge of daybreaks;
soft hurts are hard-takes
and will not roll fingers into fist
stops at lip-edge 
is nudged from the high plateaus of innocence
but will not be embraced by earth-slip;
it's hard, so hard that it floats
among brigands and ghosts
the pickpockets of hope,
so soft is soft push-away
it yields a fragrance exquisite and lethal
tortures, but never kills.  

The beginning and end of forever

Forever begins

with heart-stop,

a virginal rebirthing

and umbilical dissolve

that separates and erases

all illusion

of heart, touch and things mis

named.

Forever never ends, though;

it just gets lost in the

Alzheimeic plains

of reason and other encounters

The first love is also the last, I think. 

[From the collection 'Some texts are made of leaves', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize 2011]

Ode to banishment

Beyond the railway track
parallel lives merge 
with words and laughter
and unexpected meeting of eyes
that obliterate narrative 
they are airlifted
from the island of  sorrow;
beyond lunchtime exchanges
heart-food digests 
with the after-wash
of spray and rain
tosses the gospels of love
re-numbers time's sad pages;
and in the later this-side
of trains and food
I am told
'I am sick of words'
and banished
to vast word-less continents
unparalleled 
and unhappily un-merged. 

Crazy love dreams

Over an embankment 
and exotic insomnia
tripping along stepping stones
in improbable arrangement
between and through library shelves 
surreptitious tiptoeing 
among forbidding commonalities 
in the flipping of scripts 
and recovered transliteration
thus did memory roll slumber 
and yielded the you 
of that other time of color 
so diminished now.

Residencing

And so I write to report,

that in the ambivalent crafting of landscape

that is city,

this symphony of multitude and madness,

in the discoloring of green and blue

among the soft stone in hard arrangement,

in the grand aggregate

and glossy individuality that contains nothing,

this too may pass in the relentless dissolve of time;

but perhaps a random girl

a creature of polite address and conversation,

petal and hue in a grand bouquet

of thorn, weed and synthetic assembly,

like a faint, familiar fragrance,

trapped in the amber of memory,

may remain.

[From the collection 'The Underside of Silence']

Wine Sutra

Lips are for wine

of a particular kind

but grape drawn intoxication

dark red or gold

is discolored and poor

against the liquid maturities

of heart aged wineries

that give distilled word-essence

and the exotic silent aftertaste –

and yet, for all the delights

of lip and heart

your extensive vineyard gives

it is the trace of fingertipped grace

on fingertip-lips

that’s wine unsurpassed.